Jaime Escalante Leaves Garfield

Your editorial misses the point and makes claims that must be challenged. Escalante is, no one could doubt, an exceptional teacher and he’s going to be missed. But to call him a “superstar” places him in the same category as a running back or a recording artist. Teachers have a gift that any athlete or rock star would envy and it trivializes our profession to promote such a comparison. Also, if Escalante quit Garfield because of his colleagues or UTLA, he need only transfer schools in Los Angeles. He left for greener pastures. Your readers can decide what the green describes.

What you should mourn is not the loss of one teacher close to retirement, but the loss of over 2,000 fresh, young, optimistic, hard-working, committed probationary teachers who will be cut because the Legislature blames teachers for the passage of Proposition 140. The issue has nothing to do with education. It has to do with political pay-back and any first-year civics student knows it.

The real celebrities you should be supporting are those young women and men who are the future of our profession. Escalante will end his career far from the stress of teaching in Los Angeles. But unless the Legislature comes to its senses quickly, we will never know how many of these young teachers might “stand and deliver” to affect the lives of our children.

GEORGE WOODS

Venice